Gaining Focus
by GQSecondAct
Summary: Written for the Lit Fic Challenge.


**Title: **Gaining Focus

**Author:** Molly

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Gilmore Girls. All band names are real. I also do not own _The Would-Be Gentleman_, by Moliére.

**Written For the Literati Fanfiction Challenge.**

**Challenge:**

To Include –  
1. A double date between Rory, Jess, Lane, and Dave.  
2. A car ride.

Not To Include –  
1. Dean.

**A/N: **This is set in early Season 4. That said, Jess' father never came to Stars Hollow and Jess did not leave. The bedroom incident at the keg party also did not happen. Rory and Jess have been dating since the Dance Marathon in Season 3. Dave also never left, so he's still in the band. Lane never moved out of her mother's house. Rory's still attending Yale, Lane and Dave are both attending college as well; Jess did graduate high school and still works at Luke's.

This is very far removed from the style of writing I normally use, but simple fluff it is. I hope it's enjoyed nonetheless :)

………………………………………………………………………

Rory was having great difficulty driving. It was eight in the evening on a warm Saturday night in April and everything in and around Stars Hollow seemed to be blanketed in a mellow haze. It seemed to her the perfect night to sit on the bridge and read something with small print, legs dangling over the damp wooden planks and toes skimming the water. An ideal picture filled her head; a Moliére anthology and a pocket flashlight and absolute stillness.

Slowly, her mind began to wander as she let her hands relax on the steering wheel. Four legs appeared in the daydream instead of two, and two books. In between her focus on the road and her subconscious, Rory began to wonder if she was seeing double. It wasn't quite as still in her picture anymore. Slowly letting her foot cover the brake pedal, she felt a stinging crimson blush rise up to her face. Among her few but awesome skills, Rory was highly adroit at determining the color of blush. This one, she felt, was akin to a fire engine.

It was naïve to even hope that it would be left unnoticed. It didn't take a physiogamic specialist to realize that he was never one to ignore the opportunity. Rory tried not to think about the impending remark and concentrated on whether or not 'physiogamic' was the correct definitive of 'physiogamy.'

"The Scarlet Letter." The comment puzzled her.

"What?"

And that was where the driving became difficult.

"I thought we were playing Guess That Literary Work." Jess' face remained in model portrait pose, eyes tracing the shadows of trees on the asphalt.

Rory instinctively released a hand from the wheel to reach across the console and attack the air where she thought he might be. Her hand centimeters from his shoulder, Jess only moved farther up against the window. Sighing in frustration, she put her hand back on the wheel and the car jerked slightly.

Jess said nothing, but from the corner of her eye, Rory caught the inceptions of a smirk tugging on the corner of his mouth.

"When The Shark Bites."

Jess straightened up, his head no longer propped on the glass window and lolling with each bump on the road. "Pardon, madam?"

"I thought we were playing Guess That Literary Work," she mimicked, smiling widely. They were farther away from Stars Hollow now, and on the road towards Hartford. Rory wasn't sure what Lane had planned, but she hoped it would provoke a minimal amount of acerbic comments from Jess.

"Touché," he replied back, not missing a beat. Rory's smile was a full-blown grin by now. It was darker outside, and at the traffic light, she fiddled with the seatbelt along her lap. The ride, aside from erratic bursts of sardonic conversation and flirtatious comebacks, had been going along nicely, in a fluidly comfortable silence. What she loved about Jess was that he provided the warmest silence that she had ever known.

She sort of missed the warm unpredictable banter, though.

"Remind me again why you're driving," he spoke up. Rory shook her head a little, a loose wave falling from behind her ear.

"Need I?" she taunted, slowing down as the scenery on the road began to change from shadowy trees to the calm bustle of Hartford. "As I recall, when last I was behind the wheel with you, bones were broken and a certain brooding busboy disappeared."

"I was acting in the best interests of that possum animal thing."

"Ladies and gentlemen, your new PETA spokesman." Rory slowed down at the traffic light, groaning inwardly at the thought of leaving Lane hanging. They were supposed to be on 21st street in fifteen minutes and cars were bumper-to-bumper on either side of the Jeep.

"You know Rory, I wouldn't talk unless I'd been put in a similar position." Rory felt the color creep into her cheeks again, turning to face him. The brown lock of hair that had fallen out of place before caught on her eyelash and Jess was quicker, reaching to the side of her face, and playing his thumb along her temple before carefully brushing the hair back behind her ear.

Rory shifted in her seat, from both anticipation and hesitation. "What…what do you mean?" she managed to get out. His eyes were wide and she realized that his fingers had never left her face.

"I mean," Jess answered, turning his body to face her, "that you shouldn't criticize my driving abilities when you're not sure-" he leaned over and kissed the side of her face-

"how well you could control-" his lips covered the corner of her mouth-

"a vehicle in-" lips pressed against her throat, a hand playing with the tips of her hair-

"_hazardous_ situations." Rory closed her eyes as he trailed down her throat and along her neck. She brought a single hand up to his hair, running her fingers through it…and just as quickly, the startling blare of a horn brought her out of the trance he had put her in.

Rory pulled back sharply and struggled to regain focus of the road. The light was green and the lane next to her was swimming with speeding cars while she sat, trying to at the same time savor and rid herself of the soft ruptures of feeling he had left along her neck. Jess slouched back into his seat and smirked widely, studying Rory's brilliantly geranium cheeks with amusement.

And she had thought driving was difficult before.

…………

"Rory! Rory!" Lane was not the first thing Jess saw, but most definitely the first thing he heard. Lane could start an avalanche with the pitch of her voice. She was standing across the street from their parking spot, in front of one of the older brick buildings along the street. People were filing down the steps on the sidewalk and into the basement door. Rory ran her hands along the thighs of her jeans and locked the car doors, shoving the keys in her pocket. She was still slightly shaken, but was also coming to the realization that it was something she didn't _mind_.

"Trying to break the sound barrier?" Jess asked when he and Rory approached Lane, who was hopping excitedly outside the door of the building.

Lane turned to Rory, her explosive tones quieted. "He speaks."

"That he does," she replied, eyeing Jess. He was leaning against the brick wall, taking in the surroundings and chewing the inside of his mouth. Rory noticed that he did it whenever he didn't have a cigarette. She liked that he wasn't all leather and steel, and that probably only she presumed so.

"Oh my God! Lane! Oh my God! Oh my God!"

"Hey Dave." Rory smiled at Dave as he bounded up the stairs and tackled Lane.

"Hey Rory," he said. "Where's Jess?"

Rory nodded her head in Jess' direction.

"Oh," Dave replied. "Brooding." Rory's lips curved upward in a knowing smile. Tonight, she was becoming aware of many things she hadn't known about Jess Mariano…or herself. For instance, she liked his brooding very, very much.

Dave had the unfortunate idea of grinning at Jess as they made their way into the basement of the bar-type building, light silvery wisps of smoke hanging over the clusters of people and dim blue lights making faint circles on the wooden floor.

"Watch it," snapped Jess.

"What?" Dave shrugged, a look on his face to innocent to be believable.

"He'll be happy when I play Maurice to his Holden, won't he?" Jess whispered to Rory, slightly aggravated and further bothered by the musty, stinging smell of cigarettes.

"Jess," she warned. He just put his hand on the small of her back as Lane led them in a Peter-Cottontail type fashion to a table near the stage, hopping excitedly.

"Can you believe it? The Black Sea and The Dismemberment Plan, right here, in this very room, live!" Lane squealed.

"Lane, you're a model groupie," Rory praised, giggling a little.

"So close yet so far, Rory. There are many aspects of groupie-dom that I haven't yet perfected. You know Mama's stand on makeup of any kind. Fake eyelashes would be pressing my luck."

"Are you going for a Black Sea groupie, or a crazed Ozzy fan?" Rory leaned her elbows on the table, smiling brightly. Jess bit his lip hard to keep from smiling too.

"Which do you think would be more appealing to the publishers of my future rock star autobiography?"

"Sorry to interrupt here," Dave piped up. Jess rolled his eyes. "But I don't think that The Black Sea has groupies."

"Well that leaves you with Ozzfest, Lane." Rory snickered.

"I think an Ozzy groupie experience would be much more fun to write about, anyway." Lane sighed. The rough, quivering rattle of a Yamaha pierced the static noise around them. Lane shrieked. "Aah, Dismemberment! It's really them! They're live!"

Dave got up to get drinks and Lane sat, transfixed, watching the makeshift stage as though in prayer service.

Rory felt a third wheel until she realized she was. Jess had left.

…………

Once she had made her way through the crowd of smoky, rowdy people and out onto the somewhat cold sidewalk, Rory felt like she could breathe. He was, as always, the first thing she noticed. There he was again, leaning on the brick wall, with a cigarette hanging loosely between his lips.

"You have a knack for disappearing," she whispered warmly, standing beside him, hands in her pockets. It was night and the heavy smoke and sudden quiet of the street had let her voice drop a few tones. It was like hearing silk and Jess dropped the cigarette onto the sidewalk, rubbing it in with a battered black Chuck Taylor, as though he needed to respect the sound.

"I'm a regular Casper."

"What's with you?" she asked, turning to face him. "I really like you tonight."

As soon as she said that, Rory felt something inside of her release, and her entire body relaxed. She knew that she should be pissed that he had been rude to Dave and wouldn't talk and had left her inside to come smoke. But something had changed.

He turned to lean on his side, one eyebrow raised as he studied her face. "Not so bad yourself."

In those five or six seconds, Rory felt that ball of eagerness building up inside of her again.

So she kissed him, and the remedy worked. The ball burst into a wave of relief and heat and sent a tingling sensation all over her body. It was different tonight, different than all of the other times they had kissed – there was this sense of rightness and content and at the same time, she was wondering what it meant to kiss with "reckless abandon."

Rory smiled against his lips as she ran her hands through his hair, on the empty sidewalk on a Saturday midnight. Reckless abandon was something she was thoroughly enjoying.

And she wasn't annoyed anymore. Or ashamed. Or bothered. Or embarassed. She wasn't dancing on the fence anymore.

This was right.

…………

The next afternoon, she left a note on the check in the diner. She scribbled it down quickly but it was still precise and neat and perfectly shaped. She kissed him square on the mouth before she left and just when he realized that she was kissing him while the entire diner was watching, she had pulled away and pressed the folded check into his palm and was out the door.

She was a self-disciplined tornado.

Something felt different to him anyway.

"Good to see you're working hard, busting your ass," Luke commented sourly, running a dishrag over the table next to him.

Jess looked up, shoving the paper in his back pocket. "Yeah…" he muttered at first, not fully comprehending. "Shut up."

It was different.

…………

It was almost ten at night when he met her. It was perfectly still and the trees made a cloak over the damp wooden planks. Rory sat with her legs dangling over the bridge, toes skimming the water. A pocket flashlight in one hand, she was in the middle of _The Would-Be Gentleman._

"Hi," she whispered, without looking up. He sat next to her, the rubber tips of his shoes skimming the water next to her bare toes.

"Hi," he said back.

This was the quiet she had pictured in her head the day before…quiet, not still. Something there.

It was different. It is different.

Right.

"Jess."

"Shoot." He stared straight ahead.

"Um…" Rory paused, closing the book around her index finger and putting it down beside her. She swung her legs over the bridge, sitting cross-legged next to him. He cocked his head, looking at her, studying her face in a way where she wasn't quite sure if he was being himself, or really being himself, being vulnerable.

This was right. She was in love.

"You took the right approach to touch her heart," she stated. It was quick and somewhat of a cop-out, but she knew that he knew what she meant.

He was one of few words. But this was right.

"Won't he ever go away?" it was a deep, velvety murmur, and he knew that she knew what he meant.

"They like to be together," she whispered.

He touched her face and kissed her, and she kissed him back. The ball of anticipation low in Rory's stomach burst and she knew it all over again.

Jess felt Rory's body relax against his touch and he fell all over again. He was never one to ignore the opportunity.

END

A/N: '_you took the right approach to touch her heart,' 'won't he ever go away,' _and _'they like to be together'_ are all quoted from The Would-Be Gentleman by Moliére.


End file.
